


When The World Breaks

by SophieRipley



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, Kidnapping, Killing, Self-Defense, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 09:37:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7355656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophieRipley/pseuds/SophieRipley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nick Wilde and partner Judy Hopps wake in a darkened room after being abducted, they must free themselves and then fight for their lives to escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The World Breaks

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy story, I can't stress that enough. I almost didn't post this. Warnings for mild language, graphic violence, and character death.

Waking up was like swimming through molasses.  Consciousness dragged upward through thick sludge, taking a great deal of time and effort before eyes fluttered open and limbs began to function.  The room was dark, the only light coming from underneath the door, but to Nick’s eyes there was plenty of light by which to see.  There was little enough in this room:  the chairs to which he and his partner Judy were duct taped, situated in the center facing each other, knees touching; a table in one corner, upon which rested unknown implements hidden underneath a draped cloth; a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, currently off.  A drain set into the slightly concave concrete floor between their feet.

Nick observed and listened to the sound of silence as his mental faculties began to reset and run.  He knew they had been drugged.  He had never had this much trouble waking, so it was the only possibility.  Furthermore, there was a stinging sore spot on one side of his lower back, indicating a tranquilizer dart of some kind having hit him. Judy was slumped forward in her chair, held up by her arms which were—like Nick’s—duct taped behind the chair; she must have been drugged as well, and with a similar dose as Nick since she was still unconscious.

Nick took a deep breath, taking in all the scents in the room.  Judy’s was the first one he registered.  It was the same delicate female oak-like musk underneath sweat and lilac shampoo he’d come to expect from her, with no hint of fear coloring it.  He could detect blood, however; it didn’t smell fresh and it was masked by cleaner, leading him to two conclusions:  this room was used for torture, and they were meant to die here.  Since their legs were also bound to the chair legs, there was little he could see to do about it.

Judy’s breathing, which had been slow and regular, began to speed up.  Nick looked up at her and quietly waited for her to wake properly.  While she stirred he noticed she was wearing her uniform, though stripped of her utility belt.  They had been taken on the way home after work, then; he couldn’t remember at what point they had fallen unconscious, but he did remember leaving work and did not remember arriving home. 

Judy groaned and opened her eyes.  The pupils were dilated wide but unseeing, the darkness too much for her leporine eyes.  He could see the play of barely restrained panic enhanced by complete confusion and colored with alarm, and her mild scent became shot through with the bite of fear.

“Stay calm,” whispered Nick, his voice still thick with the effects of the sedative.  Her ears snapped up and her alarm lessened noticeably.  “We’re in an empty room, duct taped to chairs, and our gear has been taken.  I can’t see any sign of who brought us here, but whoever it was darted us at some point.  Last thing I remember is leaving the precinct with you.  How do you feel?”

“Sweet cheese and crackers,” groaned Judy, hanging her head.  “My head hurts and I’m groggy.  Just give me a minute.”  She took a few steadying breaths, and then lifted her ears with concentration.  A long minute passed.  “I don’t hear anything.  Either this is really well soundproofed, or there isn’t anyone nearby.  I don’t even hear traffic.”  Nick nodded to himself; he knew she couldn’t see him but the gesture was comforting in a way.

“You still have your badge.  Don’t move, I’m going to try to take it from you.”  He leaned forward, pulling against his sticky restraints, trying to reach the brass pinned to her chest and failing his first attempt.  His second was more effective as he threw his weight forward causing his chair to tip forward momentarily.  In the instant before it fell back with a loud clunk, his teeth found the metal and ripped it from Judy’s vest.  He now had a tool.

But how will he use it?

Nick’s heart fell.  Back to square one.  He could see Judy’s mind spinning as fast as his was, and he saw when the idea struck her.

“Try to hop around me, then drop it in my paws.”  Huh.  Well, that might work.  Nick did just that, jerking himself up and to the side.  It was loud and he only moved an inch, but he did move.  Since it was working even a little, he continued the process; it took several minutes during which he took breaks so that Judy could listen to see if they had been heard, but eventually he did make it around behind the bunny and spit the badge into her waiting paws.  Now it was her turn. 

He watched as she silently began to work the badge against the tape.  The little metal shield had no sharp or rough edges with which to bite into the tape, so it wasn’t going well.

Nick’s ears pricked up as the idea struck him.  It would require tipping the chair completely over, but it could work.

“Carrots, hold on.”  He hopped around a bit more to acquire a better position and distance.  “I’m going to fall on you and try to chew the tape off.  Okay?”  Judy nodded, and he took a steadying breath before throwing his weight forward.

The fall couldn’t have been more perfectly placed, and as he accelerated toward the floor his muzzle closed around her wrists.  He felt her jerk back and noticed the sensation of tearing fabric before face-planting with a clatter and a groan of pain.

Judy hissed into the darkness and swore, but Nick could hear her ripping the rest of the way out of the tape.  It took Nick only a moment to figure out why she uttered profanity: he could taste the sweet, coppery bite of blood. 

“Oh Fluff, I got you!”  He spoke more loudly than he intended and she shushed him for it.  “I can taste the blood, Carrots, I can smell it.  I’m sorry!  Sonovabitch!”

“Dammit Nick, I’m fine.”  Judy freed her paws and bent to free her legs as she whispered.  “Better you than who ever put us here.”  It took her only a moment to get herself out of her bindings and she wasted no time freeing him once she was.  When Nick was free, he grabbed her paws to look at the damage. 

It wasn’t as bad as he had feared.  The bite ripped into Judy’s left wrist, and it would definitely need stitches, but it didn’t look like anything critical was damaged.  Without a word, Nick went to the table in the corner, tore off a piece of the cloth, and used it as a bandage pad, taping it to the wound with a scrap of the duct tape.  Only then did he go back to the table and look at the contents. 

It wasn’t pretty.

“There are a bunch of surgical tools here.”  He looked over at Judy who was rubbing her wrist and staring blindly in his general direction.  “Scalpels, picks, forceps, that kind of thing.”

“Good.”  Judy took a few tentative shuffling steps toward him.  “We can use them as weapons.  Thanks for bandaging me.  I suppose I can’t make fun of you for not paying attention to training anymore, huh?”  His chest clenched as she spoke the last statement and grinned at him; he had of course been trained to administer first aid quickly, especially to fellow officers, but training was far from his mind when he’d done it.  His concern had been that Judy was injured.  Not a fellow officer, not his partner.  Judy.  The sweet, determined, bubbly little bunny he’d grown to care for had been injured and he was driven to make her safe.

They had been friends for a long time.  They were even best friends.  That was all it was.  Right?  And even if it wasn’t, now was _not the time._

When Judy got within arm’s reach, he put a hand on her shoulder and guided her to stand in front of him, and he pressed a scalpel into her paws.

“It’s a scalpel,” muttered Nick, “be careful.  I’m grabbing one myself, and a pick.  Maybe I can get the door open with it.”  He grabbed a handful of tools as he said it and then guided Judy to the door, where she took a cover position out of reflex.  “Keep an ear out, Fluff.”

No sooner than he had started examining the door handle did Judy tap his shoulder, indicating she could hear someone. 

“Behind the door so you’re not blinded,” she breathed into his ear.  “I’ll nail him when he enters and you can cover me.” With no time to devise something better, Nick moved to comply.  It was only seconds later when he could hear the footsteps himself; soft feet, not hooves, and it sounded relatively small.  Maybe a bit bigger than Nick himself.  Male, judging by the tone of the whistling, but whoever it was couldn’t carry a tune.

When the door was unlocked and swung open, things happened very fast.  Nick, caught behind the door, squinted against the sudden light from the doorway as Judy darted forward from her position opposite, jabbing her scalpel at the wolf standing there.  She caught him flatfooted, but her strike was badly placed as she also had to squint against the light, the delicate blade sinking into the arctic wolf’s shoulder and breaking off.  He howled in pain and backhanded Judy, driving her into the wall.

Nick darted out from his corner as the wolf drew a handgun from his hip; a swift kick to the knee brought the wolf to a kneel, but it didn’t stop him from squeezing the trigger twice, once toward Judy and once under his arm toward Nick.

The deafening roar of the weapon discharging was enough by itself to disorient Nick, but the feeling of a bullet slamming home into his left side left him sprawling on the ground, the scalpel he had been holding thrown across the room.  He felt like he had been hit by a truck and there was a white hot poker being driven in between his ribs.  The only thing that let him scramble to his feet in the wake of the trauma was adrenaline.

The wolf meanwhile had stood and turned around to face Nick.  He was favoring his left knee, the one Nick had kicked, so there must have been some damage done.  Not enough, alas.

“Now that’s a bitch,” said the wolf, looking at his shoulder; the stab wound was bleeding heavily.  “You couldn’t have just let me have my fun, huh?”

“I’m not a fan of BDSM, honestly,” spit Nick, smirking through the pain.  “And you’re not my type.”  Judy was stirring behind the wolf, climbing to her feet, and Nick’s smirk widened.  “Although I could get in on the sadism part, if you insist.”

“Or, I could just kill you now,” said the wolf, deadpan.  He raised the gun toward Nick as Judy silently leaped up, used the wall as a springboard, and launched herself at him.  Her impact threw the third shot wide and she grabbed him around the neck and buried her face into the wolf’s throat.  It would almost look sensual if it weren’t for the scream of pain that followed. As the wolf spun around to sling the bunny off of him, Nick darted forward to assist.  At the same moment his own mouth closed on the wolf’s neck and bit hard enough to cut through the skin and muscle and sever the carotid artery, the gun went off a fourth time.

With a gurgle and a spray of blood that sickeningly filled Nick’s mouth, the attacker fell to the floor. 

Nick looked frantically around to find Judy, and when he saw her curled in on herself he ran to her heedless of his own injury, kneeling and examining her.

“Oh god, Judy,” he breathed.  His hands pressed over hers, shaking with horror, in an attempt to close the wound in her belly.  It was enormous compared to her, a ragged channel of carnage where that final bullet had burrowed into her and gone clear through the other side.  It had cut her spine in two and ruptured a blood vessel on its way through, and Nick knew there was nothing he could do.  So he pulled her into his lap, and took her paw in his.

“Cold,” shuddered Judy softly, her eyes gazing into his through a haze of pain.  There was no fear in those violet orbs.  “Thanks Nick.”  Her voice was quiet, almost too much so to hear.

“No problem, Carrots.  I’ve got you, I won’t let you go.”  Nick squeezed her paw and smiled; it was more a rictus of horror than a comforting gesture, but if Judy noticed, she gave no sign. 

“My fox,” she whispered, squeezing his paw feebly with the last of her strength.  “L-love y….”  The tension in her tiny body flowed out as her last breath faded and her final words died on her lips.

The gunshot wound in Nick’s side would eventually heal.  The paramedics who arrived on the scene ten minutes later, called by bystanders outside the warehouse in which Nick had been taken who had heard the gunshots, were able to ensure that, though it took four of them, badgers all, to pry him off Judy’s body in order to go to work on him. 

Yes, his body would heal.  But even years later, Nick would be able to describe with perfect clarity the way the world bent around him in the moment before it shattered.  Therapists would call it post-traumatic stress disorder, but Nick called it karma that he woke up in the dead of night even years later hearing the soft yet devastating sound of her body failing. 

Yes, his body healed.  But Nick Wilde never did recover from the loss of his partner, best friend, and the only person he ever loved.


End file.
